The Marches hearth magic
Standing Stones and Chalk Figures
The dolmens and chalk figures that are common throughout the Marches mark the land as the property of humankind. They stamp the presence of humans on the environment, and by doing so seek to tame the forces of nature. A Marcher who wants to claim an area of wilderness will often begin by placing a standing stone on the boundary of the area he plans to claim. Likewise a circle of Landskeepers who plan to enact a large change, such as flooding a valley or improving the fertility of an orchard, will use a standing stone or chalk figure as the centre of their working. The power of the hearth magic derives from the way the stone or figure resembles a human, so some dolmans are painted or carved with features.
Poppets
Every home in the Marches has at least one straw dolly or poppet, made at the time of harvest to bring good luck to the house and ward off evil omens. These intricately twisted and knotted effigies of straw, corn, oats, rye, grass or rushes traditionally bind the vitality of the fields and bring their strength into the home.
Marcher folk place great store by these "poppets". Poppets bring protection to children, and some folk use them as elements for focusing medicine or magical effects. Every child is given a straw dolly of their own; stories abound of children separated from their poppets prematurely who suffer a terrible fate. A poppet protects a child before they are old enough to look after themselves. In particular, an expectant mother will carry a poppet to ensure the health of the child. When the season turns again to sowing the seeds for the new crop these poppets are laid on the fields and ploughed back into the earth, or occasionally cast into a bonfire, ensuring a bountiful harvest for the following year.
Wassail
After every harvest, Marcher farmers perform a traditional ceremony, a wassail, to scare away evil spirits and ensure a good crop for the coming year. Wassailing varies from place to place but typically involves parading through the village singing and drinking to the health of the fields and orchards. Food and drink produced during the year is consumed or left as an offering, for example, ale might be used to toast a barley field or a pat of butter buried in a dairy pasture. The parade is often led by a young child. As the farmers go from house to house they share food and drink with their community and receive in return produce that each household has in excess from their own harvests.
At each Autumn Equinox, the Marchers parade from camp to camp, singing the Wassail and sharing their home-grown produce with other nations in a more general blessing for good harvests in the year to come (and as a non-too-subtle reminder of where much of the Empire's food comes from). Although it is not expected, other nations sometimes reciprocate in small token exchanges of goods or services that their own territories have in abundance.
Wassail songs can be found on the Marches Music page.
Libation
The Wassail is for prosperity, a libation is a smaller thing, for luck in any endeavour. A soldier might flick foam from their beer to the ground the night before battle, and a Landskeeper might pour some beer during a ritual. It's remembering the wealth of the Marches comes form the soil, and their gold is the gold of ripe corn.